Bacteria have been found to play a vital role in our immune defence, especially in treating skin infections as per a recent research published in the Science Translational Medicine journal.

The study had revealed that patients who were affected with persistent eczema lacked in friendly bacteria which usually fight against harmful bacteria named as Staphylococcus aureus.

This led to the study on skin lotions enriched with our body’s own useful bacteria to fight against skin infections like eczema.

The study was conducted by the researchers of University of California in San Diego, United States on about five patients with eczema. They took bacterial samples from the patients’ skin and took out certain species of bacteria. They cultured them in a lab and put them into a lotion.

Man With Acne Rash At The Back And Neck. Photo courtesy of Pitiya/Freedigitalphotos.net

It was revealed that in patients with skin problem, the bacteria rich lotion protected their skin from infections by killing harmful germs present on the skin. This study thus revealed the importance of useful bacteria in protecting the skin from infections and their role in our immune defence.

Researchers performed the study by taking patients with eczema, a skin condition that is characterized by itchy red and inflamed skin. They found that patients with eczema are deficient of useful bacteria, while patients without eczema have plenty of helpful bacteria on their skin.

The researchers swabbed the skin of patients and cultured few friendly bacterial strains. They grew these useful bacteria in the lab in abundant amounts and added these microbes to skin lotion.

They made the patients to apply these personalized bacteria containing lotion to one arm and regular moisturizer to another arm.

After 24 hours of observation in all the five patients, the experimental arm treated with bacteria containing lotion had shown nearly total improvement of the skin condition in three patients and in other two patients, the staphylococcus bacteria were destroyed completely.